Your bumper guide to the best movies and series to stream during lockdown

With cinemas closed, feature and television productions suspended and nowhere to go as we enter the Covid 19 lockdown thank heavens for streaming, which has a plethora of options to keep everyone entertained and distracted.

Here is a bumper selection of highlights currently available on streaming platforms accessible to South African subscribers:

NETFLIX

THE ENGLISH GAME

With football around the world cancelled for the foreseeable future here's a pertinent period drama to remind us that in England the game wasn't always the working-class sport we think it is.

Set in the late 19th century it's the story of two players from very different backgrounds - one an Old Etonian born into wealth and privilege and the other a working-class Glaswegian brought to England to help a local team of cotton workers claim their first FA Cup victory and give the posh boys their long-awaited comeuppance.

Set against the backdrop of tensions between workers and bosses during the late Industrial Revolution it's also a dramatic tale of class tensions and prejudice and how, like politics, sport is often war by other means.

SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM CJ WALKER

Based on the real-life story of America's first female black millionaire, beauty product mogul Madam CJ Walker, this four-part miniseries is an inspiring and timely tale of a sinfully overlooked character and period in the early 20th century of America's history.

Octavia Spencer and Blair Underwood star in a story that has plenty of warmth, guts, humour and heart and offers a different take on the perennial American Dream foundational myth of the world that's available to anyone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps through sheer sweat and single-minded determination.

TIGER KING

This 7-episode docuseries is the "have to be seen to be believed," off-the-nutter-charts story of backstabbing and intrigue in the world of American big cat breeders.

The lead character, Joe Exotic, is a maniacal eccentric tiger breeder with a chip on his shoulder and an axe to grind against the animal rights activists who bay for his blood.

The story is so insane it has to be true and leads to attempted murder, mayhem and incredible levels of sheer WTF-ness.

FREUD

This German, very over-the-top and surreal reimagining of the early life of the father of psychoanalysis should not be taken as any kind of real reflection of the actual life of Sigmund Freud.

Rather, it's a mad vision of Freud as a cocaine-addicted spiritualist hedonist battling his personal demons in search of the revelations that will make him famous. It's silly but enjoyable enough if you just forget everything you've ever read about the real Freud.

SHOWMAX

LOCKDOWN MOVIE MARATHON

In anticipation of the long and sometimes seemingly interminable hours families are going to have to endure together over the next few weeks, Showmax has put together a selection of its film collections to entertain viewers of all ages.

There's the thrilling scares of Jurassic Park; the non-ironic dance as if your life depended on it choreography of the Step Up films; the feelgood growing pains and wonder of the How to Train your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda movies; the terrifying horror of the all-too-close-to-home chills of The Purge; the time-travelling high jinx of Back to the Future and all the boxing action dad can handle in the Hits Collection, which brings together a selection of pugilist dramas on screen.

ZAC & MIA (SEASON 2)

If you need a reminder of the fact that some people's lives are just worse than yours, even in the time of corona, then look no further than this heartfelt and moving series about two young teens who discover each other while both undergoing treatment for cancer.

It's not all doom and gloom and there's still plenty of youthful joy and discovery in among the tragic realities of facing their terrifying illness at such a young age.

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

PATRIOT

Starring Michael Dorman as an anti-James Bond secret agent this series offers plenty of traditional spy genre pleasures while adding a unique and easy-to-like wit and humour to the mix to make it one of streaming's more blackly humourous offerings in recent years.

STARTUP

It's cancelled now and not nearly as good as rival tech drama, Halt and Catch Fire, but there's plenty to like and enjoy in Amazon's mashup of tech business drama and drug-world thriller about a banker, a druglord and a hacker who are forced by circumstances to work together to create an organised crime empire in the digital era.

SOBIBOR

Russia's entry for this year's Academy Awards, this difficult to watch, gritty but ultimately heroic feature recounts the story of the men behind the only successful revolt carried out in a Nazi death camp during WW2.

APPLE TV

THE MORNING SHOW

Apple's first major offering of original content stars Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell and Reese Witherspoon in a drama about the sexist world of television morning shows. With a stellar cast and an intelligent script, it's a highly entertaining and thought-provoking examination of gender politics and roles within the fast-changing world of American news broadcasting.

DICKINSON

Hailee Steinfeld stars in this inventive period drama about the life of American poet Emily Dickinson that manages to mostly pull off the difficult balancing act of being true to its setting while also presenting its subject as an improbable ahead-of-her-time Millennial.

SERVANT

M. Night Shyamalan brings his particular and sometimes tiring blend of horror and psychological thriller to this creepy tale of a young Philadelphia couple whose grief over the loss of a child opens them up to manipulation by a horrifying supernatural force.

ACORN TV

THE SECRET AGENT

Toby Jones stars in this gripping adaptation of the classic novel by Joseph Conrad. It's a tense race against the clock as the titular unassuming shopkeeper leads a secret life of espionage in the employment of the Russians, tasked with proving his loyalty through the execution of a potentially lethal plot.

TRAFFIK

The seminal 1989 multi-character miniseries that inspired Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning Hollywood film, this hard-hitting and superbly acted show is still a relevant and provocative examination of the global impact of drugs on families and society at large.

KINGDOM

Stephen Fry stars as a small-town solicitor in this light, ever so British but hard not to like comedy of manners series that elicits plenty of warm chuckles.

MUBI

The subscription service for serious cineastes and lovers of the unusual, Mubi offers a feast of films from around the globe, curated and offered for limited periods before new films arrive.

This month you can catch a selection of films from the glory days of Indian cinema, off the beaten track noir classics chosen by Danish maverick Nicolas Windin Refn; a tribute to the risqué genre-bending madness of the cult film company, Troma, with newly restored treasures from its archive and a retrospective of the under-appreciated pioneering work of post-war Japanese master Yûzô Kawashima.